The case involves engineer Phil Mackereth, who joined Renault from McLaren in September 2006 and took with him information belonging to McLaren and contained on floppy disks.

Renault, who suspended Mackereth and returned the disks to McLaren, have naturally denied any wrongdoing.

The French marque are hoping to clear their name and avoid the severity of punishment meted out to the Woking team earlier this year.

In September, McLaren were found guilty of being in unauthorised possession of documents belonging to Ferrari, and fined a sporting record £50m (€69m) and stripped of all 2007 constructors’ points.

That led to McLaren pressing forward with their own case against Renault.

But in an attempt to muddy the waters against Renault, a briefing was leaked to the media a fortnight ago detailing the case against the French marque.

However, world governing body the FIA yesterday forced McLaren into embarrassingly revealing “certain factual errors” riddled through the briefing.

The fact the FIA asked McLaren to release a statement on the eve of the hearing detailing their mistakes speaks volumes, and seemingly weakens the team’s argument in the hearing in Monaco.

McLaren initially stated there were 18 witness statements from Renault employees admitting they had viewed McLaren confidential information.

In truth, 13 Renault F1 employees provided 18 witness statements, with nine admitting to viewing and discussing the confidential technical information belonging to McLaren.

McLaren stated the confidential information on computer disks was uploaded on to 11 Renault computers.

Instead, Mackereth copied the information on to 11 computer disks.

The information on the disks was uploaded by Renault IT staff in September 2006 on to Renault’s T:drive and transferred by Mackereth to his personal home directory stored on Renault’s network server.

A back-up copy of the material on Mackereth’s personal directory was made on to an unknown number of Renault’s back-up servers/tapes.

McLaren revealed the information on the 11 computer disks taken by Mackereth included 780 individual drawings.

In fact, the information taken by Mr Mackereth on floppy disks, in hard-copy form and by email amounts to 762 pages when printed.

On the 11 computer disks, there are only 18 individual technical drawings.

Finally, McLaren said the information amounted to the “entire technical blueprint of the 2006 and 2007 McLaren car.”

In contrast, the drawings and information taken by Mackereth constitute a technical definition of the fundamental layout of the 2007 McLaren car, and the technical details of its innovative and performance-enhancing systems.

Although the picture against Renault appears to be not as black as the one initially painted a fortnight ago.

Nevertheless, Renault employees did view information belonging to McLaren, so it is likely a punishment of some description – though nowhere near as damaging as the one handed to McLaren – will be imposed.